Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Years ago, when Exreme Makover, Home Edition was at its
peak, I watched an episode about a widow with a handful of children and a crumbling
house. I can’t remember how her husband
died, or much about the makeover, but I do remember that in the middle of touring
the gorgeous new home Ty Pennington and crew had just created for her, she
stopped and, with a look that was somehow a mixture of both hope and
resignation, she said, “There is happiness for us, in this life.”

I remember this because I was enduring my own hardships at
the time. Like many believers, I had a
slew of Bible verses and stories at my fingertips and I knew about Gods love, His
ability to make beauty from ashes and rescue His children from danger. I wanted to find comfort in these things, but
I know the truth, which is that God doesn’t always make beauty from ashes and
some of His children don’t get rescued from danger. (Don’t waste our time trying to talk me out
of this point. I’m a Calvinist, and I’ve
been to Ukraine.)

Besides, reading about the end of someone else’s story, even
if they do get rescued, isn’t all that helpful when I happen to be in the
middle of my story and might be headed for a different conclusion. I’m glad Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead
but He hasn’t been doing that sort of thing lately, so it looks like I might
need to accept the alternate ending for my own time on earth.

What I really wanted was someone here, now, who was enduring
some of the same things I was enduring, with no promise of an imminent miracle,
but could still look me in the eye and say, “yeah, I don’t really get what’s
going on here. I’m in agony and I hate
this but even so, I know that God is good.” That widow’s happiness, even in the midst of
all her sorrow, was more along the lines of what I needed to hear.

Fast forward to 2014.
I don’t hate my life, but I have been in a bit of agony. A few years ago, I wrote about the death of
our good friend, Bruce, and his funeral at ArlingtonNationalCemetery. It was three years ago, last month, that we
buried him.

When Bruce died, I told his wife, Maryann, to call me
anytime (day or night) that she needed to talk.
Her mom had died when she was in college and her dad died a few years later. I hate the idea of anyone feeling alone in
this world. So, I kept encouraging her
to call me and to my great relief, she did.

That first year, she called every day and sometimes two or
three times in a day. Once or twice she
called in the middle of the night. I
didn’t mind. I was grateful that she trusted me with her grief.

Often when we talked, the first thing she would say when she
got on the phone was, “I miss Bruce!” Then
we would both tear up and I would ask, “what would you tell him if he was here?”

So, that first year we spent a lot of time together. We had Thanksgiving together and
Christmas. We made sure she had plans
for things like their anniversary, the anniversary of Bruce’s death, Bruce’s
birthday, Maryann’s birthday... It’s
bewildering, the extent to which events that are usually so very wonderful
become so very not wonderful when someone is missing.

Sometime toward the end of that first year, I ran across a
friend of ours from church. His name is
Mike. I was in a women’s Bible study
with his wife, Brenda, a few years earlier.
She had been fighting cancer for a long time and tragically died about
three months before Bruce.

As we were talking and catching up, Mike, in his charming
way, mentioned that he had a date, which meant that he was open to dating,
which meant that I could start plotting.

I waited a few more months, and then I introduced Maryann to Mike.

So, there was a year of loneliness, then a year of dating.

They went back and forth for a while and I really wasn’t
sure they were going to make it. They
lived two hours apart and were attempting to blend a lot of family
history. Most of my conversations with
Maryann were still about Bruce or their kids.
She still missed him dreadfully and I wondered if her heart was really
open to anyone new.

And then one day when I picked up the phone, to my great
relief and joy, instead of saying, “I miss Bruce,” she blurted out, “I miss Mike!”

So, there was a year of loneliness, a year of dating, a year
of engagement and last week they got married.

My friend Maryann got married to someone who is not
Bruce.

I went to the rehearsal dinner at Maryann’s home and I watched
Mike, so happy, smiling down at Maryann in the middle of the kitchen that
Maryann and Bruce re-modeled, while their kids played pool together in the
middle of the rec-room that my husband, Bill, and Bruce re-tiled.

I held it together though, because I’m just that good.

The next day, I watched Maryann, who is not Brenda, walk
down the aisle to Mike, who is not Bruce, and get married.

I was really doing OK for most of the ceremony. It got hard in the middle because they had
invited the families of their first spouses and I got a glance of Bruce’s dad
sitting in the front row. Bruce’s dad
looks almost exactly like Bruce and Brenda’s sister looks almost exactly like
Brenda. That was hard enough to swallow,
but on the way to the banquet hall, a friend of mine mentioned that I was the
only person at the wedding who had been friends with both Bruce and
Brenda. For some reason, this brought
clarity to the one thought that had been lurking at the back of my mind all
weekend, “Please… don’t let this be real.”

I totally lost it then, because I’m just that pathetic.

Of course, there were no tissues anywhere and the bathroom
was outside the banquet hall and it was raining. I went over to the food table,
grabbed a napkin roll and threw the plastic silverware in my purse. By the end of the night, I had a table
setting for six.

I looked around and realized that I was the only one
crying. I had planned ahead for
this. I took on the job of decorating
the getaway car. Bill and I found a few
boys to help us collect cans, borrow a few hydrangeas from the table centerpieces
and make a sign. Then we all went to the
parking garage and decorated.

Wouldn’t you know, when Maryann and Mike left, he escorted
her around the front of the car and the photographer didn’t follow them
outside. No one saw the decorations
besides me, Bill and handful of boys. To
be fair, it was raining, but it was an awful waste of some good centerpieces on
a mighty fine car. Unappreciated beauty
is so tragic!

I realized as we walked back into the banquet hall that
Maryann and Mike were handling things much better than me, even though they had
lost far more. The upcoming week in Cancun might have had something to do with it, but even
so, Maryann has mentioned that one of the hardest things about marrying Mike
was the full understating that God might take him away too, at any time, just
like He took Bruce.

It was not the same as other weddings I’ve been to, where God seems so much more kind and the world seems so much more safe. Yet here were Mike and Maryann, beaming as they got into that car. They were reveling in their supreme act of bravery—being willing to love another person, despite the challenges, the pain and the risk involved. It was not that God made beauty from their ashes. It was that they accepted His beauty, along with their ashes.

I’m starting to understand that look on the widow’s face. There is happiness for us, in this life.

About Me

Welcome Readers! This blog began as a record of our trip to Ukraine where we adopted two boys in 2010. Since the blogging was getting a little boring over time, we added two girls from China in 2013. To answer the obvious questions; Yes, we have nine kids (eight still at home). Yes, we’d adopt more kids if we could afford it. Yes, our house is a wreck. For the record, our girls do not take ballet, our boys are mediocre at soccer, and none of our children are in the gifted program at school. Nevertheless, God loves us and sent His son to die for our sins!
The blog title is from a poem by W.H. Auden (Finding Atlantis). As soon as I heard the phrase, I thought it perfectly described our schlepp through life. When things fall apart, we remember that we give from a ridiculous spiritual/emotional abundance because we drink from streams of living water that never run dry.